the accidental smallholder :: diary archives

Gourmet Garlic

One of the first bits on content added to our site was my short guide to growing garlic. In my enthusiastic naivety it was intended to be the first of many growing guides, but here we are over 3 years later and it's still a wee orphan. Anyway, I digress. We get a lot of visitors to the site arriving from Google and other search engines searching for information on growing garlic. Originally the guide suggested that buying and planting supermarket garlic was the best way to start, and would give perfectly good results.

But after a couple of years of disappointing crops of small, indeterminate garlic, it finally dawned on me that maybe there was something to recommend the garlic cultivars offered by specialist growers. So last autumn I bought and planted some Solent Wight and Purple Wight bulbs from the Garlic Farm, located on the Isle of Wight. The results have been excellent, and the guide has been updated accordingly - if you're growing garlic buy the best possible stock.

This year I've gone a step further and acquired a Garlic Lover's Growing Pack from the aforementioned Garlic Farm. It's advertised as featuring 6 different type of garlic, but ours came with 7 (we might just have been lucky):

• Solent Wight
• Early Purple Wight
• Elephant Garlic
• Albigensian Wight
• Iberian Wight
• Lautrec Wight
• Heritage Purple Moldovan

The Elephant Garlic will draw the crowds - the individual clove are the size of the whole heads of garlic you'll buy from the supermarket, and the plants grow to 5 foot tall apparently - but the descriptions of some of the other varieties in the excellent notes which accompanied the box had my mouth watering, especially the Lautrec, reputed to be the ultimate for flavour.

Following the expert advice of Colin Boswell at the Garlic Farm I planted all but the Solent Wight yesterday. The hardest part was keeping track of what I'd planted where with so many types, so I've made good notes for once! The Solent Wight will go in the ground in January, but in the meantime we need to convince it that it's still summer. I've also picked up some tips from the notes which should ensure we get the best possible crop - like removing the flowering heads when they appear, which can increase the ultimate size of the bulbs by up to 20%.

At a time of year when we're mostly lifting produce from the vegetable garden and clearing beds it's really nice to be able to plant something that will pay dividends next summer. I'll post from time to time with progress reports, and come next autumn we'll do some taste tests.

Tea loaf

You might like to try this recipe more or less from from Jane Grigson's "English Food".

Soak 12oz dried fruit (I use sultanas) and 4oz soft brown sugar in half a pint of cold Indian tea, overnight. Add 8oz SR flour and a beaten egg. Mix together, put into a greased 2lb loaf tin and bake for about an hour on 180C, or until a skewer come out clean. Cool, turn out, wrap in tinfoil and keep for a few days to mature. Serve thinly sliced spread with unsalted butter.

It is so easy, really yummy and it keeps for ages. We've just finished one that was made 10 days ago and it just gets better. It's really handy to have if friends drop by for a cuppa. You can kind of kid yourself on that it's really, really healthy!!

Only thing is, I've made it so ofetn lately that Dan's a bit fed up with it, so I need to find some variations on this theme.

Smokey comes home

Last Saturday, I brought Smikey home for the first time. He's at a livery yard about three miles away, where he is really settled. However, I thought it woudl be nice to bring him home for at least a couple of hours.

To put you in the picture, I bought a Highland pony with the intention of learning to drive. Many, many years ago I would sometimes see a gentleman with a chestnut pony in a trap and I always thought it would be great to try this. Anyway, I've had Smokey four years now but haven't done anything about it. Until now...

Because Smokey has no shoes on, he needs to get regular work on tarmac to make his feet grow and toughen up. My EP (equine podiatrist) has advised that he is to have at least 20 minutes per day walking on tarmac. An instructor I have been following (Kirsty Logan) recommends driving the horse rather than leading, to encourage the horse to be brave. So the two came together and I started driving Smokey for his 20 minute walk. Initially, I was using my horseman's halter, 12 foot line and 22 foot line, but I have purchased a roller, which really helps as it stops the lines falling on the ground if Smokey dips his head. Smokey has taken to this well - we've been into the village, round past the roadworks, past buses, motorbikes, barky dogs, goats and he's been really good. This made me resurrect the idea of driving. So I'm thinking about investing in a cheap-ish set of synthetic harness.

The next stage is to get Smokey comfortable with dragging things, so that might be this weekend. I've done some desensitisation already.

So, the point of this is that I long-reined Smokey home last weekend. Dan came with us, and that was helpful for getting across roads and the scarey speed bumps. Once home, he had a rest in our field, accompanied by Tess and Meg (but mostly Tess) then we went back to the yard.

Pig processing

On Thursday we got our latest pigs back from the butcher, having taken them to the abattoir for slaughter on the previous Tuesday. So for the past 5 days I've been chopping, mincing and salting pork from dawn to dusk. Well, not quite, but at times it's seemed that way.

This year we decided to make our own sausages, so the butcher provided us with all of the trimmings fresh and unfrozen. I prepared the trimmings on Friday night and minced up a pound for us to test some recipes. I fried up small patties of each, and we had them on rolls. We tried plain pork, pork and chive, white pepper and hot and spicy. The clear winners were pork and chive and white pepper.

So on Saturday R and I spent the best part of the day in the kitchen making the pork and chive and white pepper sausages, and we also made boudin blanc. This is a large pudding made with chicken, pork (lean and fat), breadcrumbs, cream, onions, white pepper and all spice. The puddings are gently poached for about 20 minutes, allowed to cool for 24 hours, then fried and traditionally served with fried apple rings. We've frozen ours and will try them later this week, but they smelled very appetising when poaching.

We also had two fresh whole bellies, weighing about 16lb each, for bacon (the picture below shows two quarters of a single belly). These have been prepared over the past 5 days with a very simple dry cure of salt and saltpetre, and are currently hung drying in our garage. Later this week I'll fire up the smoker and they will get at least 24 hours over oak smoke, producing (we hope) the most wonderful bacon.

I'll be updating the pig articles over the coming weeks with details of the sausages, boudin blanc and bacon, and the results of some planned smoking experiments, including eggs.

Something simple

Sometimes the simple things are best.

Today, we couldn't decide what to have for lunch. It certainly wasn't going to be sausages (for reasons Dan will explain in due course). Since the eggs are piling up in the fridge, I suggested "soft boiled eggs and soldiers". Although we eat eggs a lot, usually we have them scrambled, poached, omelettes etc. and I just fancied a nice soft boiled egg. Or two.

They were delicious - laid yesterday, huge and brown, with creamy yolks, a wee spinkle of salt and black pepper. Dan cooked them to perfection, and we had them with buttered toast soldiers and a glass of whole milk. Absolutely scrumptious. It was like a "Famous Five" lunch!!

We've started buying whole milk in preference to semi-skimmed. Against our whole diet, the difference in calories is minimal and we like it much, much better, especially in porridge, on cereal, in a glass. In fact, just about any way. Hey ho, we all die of something and I don't think semi-skimmed is going to save me. Anyway, I worked off the calories in the garden this afternoon, weeding the vegetable beds, while Dan watched the Chelsea game.

Victoria plums

Our Victoria plum tree did much better this year than last. If you recall, I ate the entire crop last year - four plums. This year, we got about four pounds of plums - they looked lovely on the tree, like big rubies.

Unfortunately, the heavy rain after the long dry spell caused them to split so, rather than share them with the earwigs, we picked them all and turned them into chutney.

I used Delia's "Old Dowerhouse" recipe. We haven't tried it yet as it has to mature for a month but the recipe was recommended, so we're sure it will be lovely.

Happy birthday, Meg

It's Meg's sixth birthday today. It doesn't seem like anytime since she came to live with us, in November 2000. How she shattered Tess's peace - I don't think Tess has recovered emotionally!

We didn't plan to have a second pup just as quick as we did, but one of the farm dogs, Gyp, had pups and the farmer offered us one. When we brought her home, she had a little pot belly, which turned out to be the result of a terrible worm burden. After the treatment, she was real skinny and she still is. We're sure there's a bit of whippet in her breeding somewhere. Her sister, Sally, is still at the farm and they don't look alike at all. Unfortunately, Gyp has to be put to sleep last winter - she must have been about thirteen.

Meg wasn't the most attractive pup, especially in "adolescence", but she is a bonny dog now. She's incredibly active and very athletic, but a bit hyper and anxious, which is probably why she's so thin.

She's had some chicken for her birthday tea - she (unknowingly) shared it with Tess, Cassius, Copper and Felix - and she's now flat out, sound asleep under my desk. Little sweetheart...