The Cottage Smallholder

“I’ve brought you some broad beans and some new potatoes.” My heart leapt as John Coe passed me the bags. We haven’t grown new potatoes this year – just concentrated on our main crop. “Just wipe the potatoes and the skins will fall off. Easy.” He placed a pack of plants wrapped in newspaper carefully Read More »

For the past five years John Coe has supplied us with sprouting broccoli plants. The purple variety gives a bigger, longer harvest. But nothing can beat the sweetness of white sprouting broccoli. This is the Premier Cru of sprouting broccoli. It is generally not available from the shops as the plants are smaller, the yield Read More »

The taste of really fresh purple sprouting broccoli from the garden is only beaten by the flavour of sweet white sprouting broccoli. John Coe gives us broccoli plants each year in July. They need to be covered with nets or the birds will strip the young leaves clean within a few days. They also need to be Read More »

The benefits of celery are enormous. Celery is thought to possibly reduce blood pressure, help combat cholesterol and even cancer. Leving these aside, braised celery can be a superb and delicious vegetable. This recipe makes it easy to include in any well balanced diet. I’m always attracted to the heads of celery in the supermarket and often eat celery and Read More »

I’m not keen on naked cauliflower but cauliflower cheese has been a staple for years. Somehow dressing the cauli in a cheese sauce and grilling the top transmogrifies the ingredients into something delicious. Or so I thought before I presented my old traditional version to Danny with a flourish. He wasn’t overly impressed. “Can we Read More »

Kay who writes the Blue World Gardener blog has inspired me with her suggestion of a store cupboard meal once a week. I reckoned that I needed to fine tune the larder and start practicing immediately. So when I next visited Daily Bread, I popped a bag of dried onions in my basket. My mum Read More »

Mike serves his Boston baked beans with coleslaw. I watched him grating and chopping the vegetables by hand. It seemed to take forever. Then he started to add the ingredients for the dressing one by one, straight into the chopped vegetables, tasting every now and then. Mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, pepper and I missed the rest Read More »

There are two types of sprouting broccoli – purple and white. The purple are generally bigger plants. These are very tasty but nothing can beat the tender sweetness of the white sprouting varieties. Many people that I have spoken to have given up trying to cultivate sprouting broccoli. “It sat there. Doing nothing. Eventually we Read More »

Danny tottered in, burdened with two carrier bags of bargains on Friday evening. He had been dispatched to buy a good bottle of vodka. Waitrose had Stoly for ten quid a bottle so he swooped in there and had discovered a small bin of almost-out-of-date fruit and veg. As I poured a vodka, he retrieved Read More »

If more people tasted home grown purple sprouting broccoli they would surely cultivate it. You would see it on London balconies, in country herbaceous borders and standing proud in every kitchen garden in the land. Home grown does not have the slight limpness and bitterness of the supermarket stuff. It’s sweet and delicate and melt Read More »