We have been rather neglectful of our allotment this year.  With personal and work issues taking priority, keeping our fruit and veg patch in apple pie order has rather gone by the wayside.

So it seems even more of a miracle to be enjoying  an abundance of tasty home grown produce this summer.

Top of the list are the artichokes.  We now have over a dozen sturdy plants – both green and purple varieties, and each plant gave us ten or more tasty fruits.  Truly these are the vegetable for lazy gardeners – resprouting energetically every year on even the dryest untilled soil. They are delicious  steamed or boiled and served with a garlic and herb vinegarette.  The glut can be bottled as hearts and enjoyed in the winter months.

Broad beans are another  favourite;  and like all really fresh organic veg, need only the simplest of preparations to transform into a flavoursome meal.  Our favourite is Habas con Jamon.  Start by  browning some onion, garlic and pork (bacon or ham will do).  Then  add a couple of handfuls of shelled, blanched  broad beans.  If the beans are young and fresh they can be eaten  without removing their grey overcoats.  Otherwise slip these off after blanching.  Cook for another 10 minutes then add a handful of chopped mint.  Voila!

Chard and spinach have done very well this year. The colourful chard stalks can be steamed and eaten like asparagus.  Then combine the cooked leaves with onions, garlic, dill and some feta cheese for a Greek style filling for pies and frittata. It also works well in a lasagna, with the pasta layer being replaced with slices of grilled courgettes.

Our courgette harvest is only just getting started.  Young courgettes can be eaten raw  and combined julienne style with strips of peppery raw turnip and some shredded courgette flowers for a colourful salad bowl.

The sight of hedgerows bedecked with berries is one of the glories of an autumn walk.  It is also a fantastic source of food for free. And since we arrived in the country five years ago, I still get childishly excited about this.  All that food just waiting to be picked and eaten.  Amazing!

This year, nature’s abundance has been badly affected by the weather with all  fruits – apples and plums as well as wild berries  giving a poor harvest. Not a sloe in sight on the blackthorn bushes that line the field margins next to our house.  Elderberries too are thin on the ground.  Nevertheless, we managed to gather enough of these for a batch of elderberry and apple jelly.  This has to be one of my favorite preserves.  First because it can be made entirely from hedgerow fruits – so the only expense is the sugar.  Secondly elderberries give the jelly an incredible depth of flavour and colour – neither of which of deteriorate over months of storage as is the case with most fruit preserves.

Now  it’s true that jelly making is a bit more fiddly than jam as it requires straining the cooked fruit through a jelly bag before combining with sugar.  But the smooth velvety texture you end up with is an utter delight.

The absence of sloes and damsons meant that our traditional trio of fruit gins is this year limited to blackberry.  Fruit spirits are a doddle to make and are best drunk fireside in the chilly months; either neat, in bijou glasses, or drizzled over pancakes for an impromptu and warming desert.  The base spirit can be either gin or vodka – any cheap supermarket brand will do.

Our first blackberry forage in late September produced only a pound or so of smallish fruits and these all went into the gin.  I’d more or less given up on gathering any more until a bright morning at the end of October and a walk along some quiet lanes revealed a fine horde of plump fruit.  As we had come out without any bags or containers, we filled our pockets to overflowing.  Then decisions as to how  to make the best use of the prized harvest.

Blackberry ice-cream is definitely top of the list.  It is custard based, so less rich that other ices that use a lot of double cream. I plan to make a triple batch as it keeps in the freezer for a couple of months and works well with all those appley puds we eat in the winter with the fruit from our orchard.  It’s also good on its own with a slug of blackberry or sloe gin.

This will leave just a handful of berries to add some colour to a classic eve’s pudding.

Blackberry icecream

Place a pound or so of blackberries into a shallow baking tray and drizzle over 12 oz of sugar. Place in a warm oven and leave for half an hour until the sugar has dissolved and the berry juices have started to run.

Meanwhile, make a custard with the yolks of two eggs, a dessert spoon of flour or cornflour, the same of sugar and half a pint of milk.  Leave to cool once thickened.

For a truly velvety icecream, sieve the blackberry mix to remove all the pips.  This takes quite a while and can be hard on the hands but the end result is sublime.  Alternatively simply stir the unsieved blackberries into the cooled custard.

Whip half a pint of cream and add this to the blackberry custard.  Tip the whole lot into shallow plastic trays and pop into the freezer for a couple of hours until ice crystals start to form.  Once this happens, take it out of the freezer and give it a good beat with a fork until it is smooth.  Return to the freezer until fully frozen.

At this time of year, growing your own can seem all hard work (digging, weeding and sowing) with very little to show for it. So I was gleeful to have spent Easter with an abundance of tasty produce to use while cooking for family and friends.

The forced rhubarb is so sweet and tender it needs little accompaniment, but with a basket of unforced Timperly Early to use as well, I decided on a spring version of classic Eton Mess for a good friday lunch with friends; and to my mind the sharpness of poached rhubarb is the perfect foil for light sticky meringue and whipped cream.

For the first year ever, we have been harvesting purple sprouting broccoli and other brassicas – previously the plants were left shredded by pigeons and rabbits well before christmas. This year – Fort Knox! As a result we have been feasting on cavolo nero, green cauliflower and scorzerona since November. The sprouting broccoli was a later developer – so late, I nearly pulled it up to make way for a sowing of spring peas. But it’s been a real winner. The more you pick, the more it grows and delicious lightly steamed in salads, in stir frys or made into a tart with hot smoked salmon from the Cley smokehouse.

Another great discovery this year has been that vegetables can be eaten in so many forms. Take radishes. We grew these in the summer and they went to seed before we had the chance to pick them. Within weeks they had grown into tall delicate plants bearing bucket loads of succulent spicy pods – a cross between radishes and sugar snap peas.

And so this winter, as we let some of the cavolo nero and cauliflowers go to seed (after all there is a limit to how many cauliflowers you can eat in the two week period when they are all ready to pick), we found ourselves trying the sprouted heads – delicious!

Added to this we have had armfuls of salad in the form of fennel, sorrel,parsley, lambs lettuce and land cress – all mainly self seeded so very little effort involved.

Finally – the last of the winter squashes. We tend to grow mostly Crown Prince. They look and taste fantastic, fruit prolifically and can be stored for around 6 months. As a result I am a sucker for new recipes. So on Easter Sunday a spicy pumpkin cake for desert – moist, creamy…and with a handful of black pepper thrown in, quite a kick too…

Spiced Pumpkin Cake

50 g raisins soaked in 100ml of licor (I used rum, but galiano or cointreu would do as well)
450-600g pumpkin, peeled, seeded and cubed and stewed in 150 g butter (or mix of butter and olive oil) til soft. The greater the proportion of pumpkin, the more cheesecake like in consistency the end result will be. I like to use lots!
Pinch salt,
150 g sugar,
50g almonds chopped,
grated zest of lemon,
1 tbsp coursely ground black pepper.
50 g plain flour – or ground almonds/polenta if you want wheat free.
1 heaped tsp baking powder
2 eggs
icing sugar
8 inch tin, 180 degrees

Beat softened pumpkin ’til smooth and add all dry ingredients including raisins in licor.

Then add egg yolks, followed by whipped whites which should be folded in.

Bake for 1-1.5 hours. It is ready when scewer comes out clean.

When cool, dust with icing sugar.