Recipe: Janssons Frestelse

Uses: potatoes and onions

This recipe is Swedish and means Jansson's Temptation!.

This is a difficult time of year for those of us who are trying to feed ourselves from the allotment.  Very little is coming ready to eat fresh, the new year's crops will not be ready until June, and yet the stored potatoes and onions are past their best. The potatoes are starting to go soft or throw up shoots. And the onions are developing green central shoots.

So this is a recipe which uses up those tired potatoes and onions.

You need, potatoes, onions, anchovies and cream.  The proportions are are up to you. I use a small tin of anchovies, and a 300ml tub of cream when I cook for 2 of us.

1.  Slice the potatoes and onions.
2. Grease and overproof dish
3. Put layers of potato, onion and anchovy in the dish. The top and bottom layers should be potato. Add pepper (the anchovy should provide enough salt) to each layer.
4. Pour over half of the cream and the anchovy liquid.
5.  Bake for half an hour at about 200 degrees C.
6. Pour over the rest of the cream and return to the oven until the potatoes are cooked through.

The potatoes are the vehicle for the flavours of the anchovy, cream and onion.  It;s nice with more cream, but very decadent.

Hens & Foxes

Keeping hens on an allotment is easy, providing you can keep the foxes out. However if a fox does get in, it will kill in a frenzy, just for the hell of it, rarely seeming to take the carcasses away to feed its young.  And if the fox does leave any hens alive, it will return a night or two later to finish the job.

When I first started keeping hens 25 years ago, we lived in a small Norfolk village, and, in my innocence, I gave the hens minimal fencing, which simply surrounded the area under some apple trees. It was intended to keep the hens in rather than any foxes out. Any mildly energetic fox would have been able to dig under or climb over in seconds.

At first the hens roosted in the trees, which was probably out of harm’s way. But after a while they started flying over the fence and into the jaws of our large dog.  So we clipped their wings, which stopped them flying (I suppose they could have flown round in circles) but also stopped them roosting in the trees, and brought them back down to fox level.

Nevertheless, in 13 years in that rural village, we didn’t see a single fox.

In my first day at our urban allotment, however, I saw my first fox walking up the path between the plots in broad daylight, bold as brass. And in the early hours one summer's morning, I saw a couple of foxes mating in the road.

This just reinforces my sense that foxes are nowadays an urban rather than a rural problem.

Since starting up with poultry again at 4 years ago, we have been visited by a fox twice. The first time a couple of years ago, he dug and pushed through a corner where the netting was not secure. He killed 2½ hens out of 4. (The ½ was still alive but with her neck chewed through and head hanging off. So we dispatched her the next morning.) To make the run more secure I improved the depth of my fence down a full 18 inches, and then laid some old metal grids under the soil horizontally around the perimeter of the fence. And 2 days later I could see scrape marks where Mr Fox had tried to dig his way in again.

This arrangement kept my hens from the foxes for more than 2 years . But just 2 days ago, he got in again. And it was my own stupid fault. I had removed one of the grids when I dug the new asparagus bed next to the chicken run, and simply forgot to put it back. The fox had dug and pushed through again, same corner. It’s as if he has been patiently watching me for 2 years and waiting for me to make a slip. 

This time he killed 4½ from 6.  (One has lost some feathers, and is limping and seems so traumatized she is almost catatonic. I’ll pop down in a minute to see if she has survived the night.)

So, how to keep the fox from the hens?

The most secure way is to let them out yourself every morning and put them to bed every evening. Foxes generally (but not always) hunt at night, and by these means you are keeping the hens out of harm’s way when foxes are about.  Most of my neighbours do it this way but I don’t. My main reason is simply that I don’t want to have to go down at dawn and dusk every day. I justify myself by saying that the hens get more hours of daylight, and therefore stay in lay for longer, if they put themselves to bed. But really, I wouldn’t keep hens if I had to go there twice a day in addition to any visits to do other allotment work.

My method relies of secure fencing! I fence the entire area in, including ceiling, so that the hens live in a kind of chicken-wire room. Foxes can both climb and dig, so the hens have to be protected from above as well as below. The fencing needs to be dug in about 18 inches all round. In addition it’s best to lay some kind of barrier around the perimeter, either inside or out – paving slabs would be ideal. The hens let themselves out at dawn and put themselves to bed at night.  I just visit once a day to top up food and water, collect eggs, and throw them some grain or greens.

After the fox got in, we piled bricks, scrunched up chicken wire, and even an old garden fork, in the corner where he had got in. This is only temporary, until I have time to reinforce the fencing. And yesterday morning there was a large hole where he had tried to dig his way in again. He failed though, I suppose that as he dug under the bricks they would fall on his head!

Recipe – Rhubarb Fool

Uses: rhubarb   (This is a recipe for those weeks in spring when you have a glut of rhubarb.)

Many fool recipes use double cream as a base. Others, older and more frugal, use custard.  I find the former too heavy and the latter too….well, I just don’t like custard. So I use greek yoghurt, and it seems to work well.

The ratio of cooked rhubarb to yoghurt is a matter of taste and availability. I aim for about equal volumes of each, but you can get away with less rhubarb. 

1.              De-string the rhubarb and chop into 1 inch lengths.

2.              Place on a pan on a low heat with as little water as you can get away with – just enough to stop the rhubarb sticking. Leave until it softens and goes mushy.

3.              Stir in sugar to taste and leave to cool, (but remember the yoghurt is a bit sour and the sweetness is going to be diluted by the extra volume of the yoghurt).

4.              When the rhubarb is cool, stir in the yoghurt and spoon into bowls or glasses. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

5.              Before serving, I like to sprinkle on some flaked almonds or desiccated coconut.

Variation: Other soft fruits will work equally well. I like gooseberry fool.

Photo Journal - Early April 2012

I'm not very good at integrating photographs with this journal. It's just that, nowadays, I'm much more interested in words than pictures.

However, successive blocks of nothing but text can be a bit turgid I realize. So I have persuaded my wife (who is interested in photography) to take a series of shots once a month. So I hope to include a monthly picture diary of the allotment's progress.

We took these pictures more than a week ago, but it has taken me till then to work out how to transfer them on my AppleMac from iphotos where Mrs Spud kindly put them, to somewhere where I can transfer them into the blog. I am a bit of a technophobe, and every setback finds me closing the computer and deciding to try again tomorrow.

  The seedlings in the greenhouse

 The red pots in the middle show some healthily growing calabrese. Unfortunately a hard frost 2 days later did for them, even underneath a double layer of fleece. Similarly with the Igloo cauliflowers, in the modules top left.

I am still learning what can stand the cold and what can't, and of course, I am making mistakes. Intuitively, I would expect lettuces, which cannot withstand the winter cold as mature plants, to suffer from frost more readily then cauliflowers, which can. However the opposite seems to be the case with seedlings. The young brassicas were nipped off, whereas the young lettuces (in green tray to the right) shrugged off the cold.

 This strange picture shows my potatoes growing in sacks in the greenhouse. They are growing so fast that I have to cover the shoots with soil almost daily.

 The Field Bean Bed - sown in November - is now looking good.

 Some spring onions, sowed in the autumn (variety  white lisbon hardy) are supplementing spring salads. This bed also hosted the leeks. The board just visible at the top of the picture I stepped on while harvesting the last of the leeks. (I am diligent about not treading on and compacting the soil.)

  Here are some lettuces that I have planted out in a brassica bed.  These lettuces were sown in the autumn and have overwintered outside without protection (variety Winter Gem). I intend to plant out early cabbages and cauliflowers in between. By the time the brassicas need the space in early summer, the lettuces will have been eaten.

My pea bed consists of 2 temporary lengths of netting with a temporary path between.

 My first early peas (variety Meteor). If they need to, they can hold onto the netting. However first earlies make quite sturdy plants, which often manage to survive without supports. These were started off (by soaking and sprouting) on 1st March, and planted out late March. My neighbour keeps cursing, and triumphantly trapping, mice which love to eat the pea seed he sowed directly in the soil. By starting mine off indoors, I avoid this problem.  The metal grid leaning against the netting is to protect against the other menace when growing peas, birds, which love to eat  the tender young shoots.

 An Allium bed. In the background is garlic I sowed in the autumn, in the foreground shallots.

  The garlic really does need weeding!

These shallots were sown a different times - autumn, winter and spring, yet all appear much the same.

The broad beans, sown in the autumn (variety Aquadulce Claudia), are growing strongly

The Seedlings’ Journey

(i)            The Propagator

I sow my seeds in an electric heated propagator whenever possible. I have three – one which holds 7 small seed trays, and two which hold a full-sized (or more normally 2 half-sized) seed-trays each. And they are working overtime at this time of the year.

As soon as seedlings poke through, I open the vents, and then a day or 2 later transfer them to the conservatory window-sill. There is always something waiting eagerly to take their place.

(ii) The Conservatory

After a couple of days on the window-sill, I remove the lid to the seed tray. The trays sit on capillary matting and I water from below. Carefully! (This is mainly for safety reasons, as there are normal domestic electric sockets installed, and electricity and water don’t go well together.) The amount is critical. The matting must be moist, but the trays/pots must not be standing in water.

The window-sills in the conservatory are full at the moment, (about 20ft worth), as are a variety of improvised shelves and tables I have placed alongside.

During the day I keep the French windows into the house open. The conservatory  faces south, so in sunny weather it acts like a solar heater, pumping hot air into the house (and away from the seedlings which might otherwise fry). In cold winter I have the woodburner lit and the warmth helps bring the seedlings along. The building is of sufficiently high quality that I can be confident that when I close the French windows at night, it will remain frost-free at this time of year.

The seedlings  will be pricked out into pots before continuing their journey.

(iii)The Greenhouse

When the seedlings are sturdy enough, I transfer them to the greenhouse. Here they sit on staging and I water them every other day from above with a fine-rose can.

After my experiences a couple of weeks ago, I need to keep a eye out for frosts. Tonight, for example, the forecast suggests -2 degrees. So I will fleece the seedlings inside the greenhouse, and make an extra journey there in the morning to remove the protection. The potato sacks can simply have their tops turned over.

(iv) The Plastic Mini-greenhouse

The winter storms mashed up my plastic cold frame in January, and I have decided not to repair it, but instead to replace. (I was never that happy with it anyway – it was a real pain to get the lid to slot into place.) So I have replaced it with a discounted plastic mini-greenhouse. This has the advantage that it allows vertical gardening - I can save ground space by placing it against a fence and securing it against wind.

This is where I will harden off seedlings. In the past I have found that moving seedlings from the cold greenhouse, to a cold frame with the lid open works well as a way of hardening off. Now I can just leave the plastic door rolled up instead.

Once it is no longer needed for hardening off, I am hoping to use it as somewhere to grow cucumbers. I have had poor results in the past trying to grow cucumbers in the same greenhouse as tomatoes. The thing is, cucumbers like a humid environment, and tomatoes don’t. (Or at least, I’m worried about splashing water around near the tomatoes because of blight.) When I remove the shelves in the mini-greenhouse,, the lateral shelf supports should be ideal for tying in the growing plant and taking the weight of maturing fruit.

The main disadvantage is that it is flimsy, and the plastic will deteriorate and crack and need replacing in a few years. And, or course, by then the garden centre will have stopped stocking this line and it will be hard to find. (Have you noticed how they do that?) With this in mind I will buy a replacement already and keep it in a frost & sunlight –free environment at home.

So my seedlings start their life in the propagator, move to the conservatory window-sill, then later to the cold greenhouse, then again to the new mini-greenhouse/cold frame before finally being planted out.

I am hoping that by growing far more seedlings than I actually require myself, I can pass on to friends and family, and maybe sell a few to defray the costs of seed & compost.