mwnch

Blinking heck, it’s been a while since I’ve been here… it’s nice to be back! Been spending too much time messing around elsewhere…

I managed to grow a couple of pumpkins this year and the obvious thing for me to do with them was to make soup – especially as Guy Fawkes night was coming up. So here, in its gloriously emancipated vagueness (no two pumpkins are created equal, therefore no quantities) is my pumpkin soup recipe…

From Barn Conversion 2010

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I’ll start with some honesty – some of the things that I make seasonally from our own produce are not things that I especially relish … jars of chutney that remain gathering dust or that blackberry jelly that is just a bit too ‘thick’. This is definitely not one of those. I prefer using vodka to gin, but the recipe will work equally well with either.

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Pudding for (virtually) nothing and it’s tasty as can be …

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Whilst rooting around in the woods, I noticed the similarity between the leaves of cow parsley (or wild chervil) and flat leaf parsley. Nibbling away at some and consulting a book or two there seemed to be no reason not to eat some.

My plants are quite large and well grown and I guess, like nettles they may have been much more succulent earlier in the year, but I managed to pick some paler, younger looking leaves from the fresher shoots.

Not only is the look similar to parsley, but so is the flavour; a little stronger and earthier to my palate than culinary parsley, but nevertheless, tasty and a great garnish for scallops and bacon which was my first application of them.

We’ll be trying it with my wife’s pea cawl next….

We’ve recently been spending much of our time chopping down brambles and occupied in other such rural pursuits. The stinging nettles that we’ve encouraged to grow in abundance due to the assault we’ve made on the brambles that used to occupy their ground, have looked (at least to me) delicious. As a long time fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall scythe in hand I gathered a large bin bag full of them and made some soup.

Tasty, green and spinachy with a tang of nettle sting about it. I like to serve with a good lump of grated cheese melting invitingly in the middle of the bowl of soup.

Thanks Hugh.