Grape Jelly recipe
When I first came here I planted a spindly grape vine on a trellis at the back of the pond garden. This was part of a master plan to disguise a neighbour’s rusty corrugated iron fence. I was purely interested in the look of the vine. Large leaves through the summer and decorative gnarled stems in the winter. Pottering by the pond last summer, I spotted a tiny bunch of grapes peeking out from under a vine leaf. Closer inspection revealed a mini harvest of grapes, puny but fat and dark. Thrilled with the prospect of making wine with our...
read moreOverwhelmed by fruit flies. Time for ‘Baked Bananas in Rum’ recipe
When I got back this evening, Danny was muttering about the fruit flies in the kitchen. Unfortunately one had taken a nosedive into his whisky. He paced the room looking for the source of the invasion. Could it be the tomarillos, the wild plums, the carrier bags of grapes, the tiny greengages that Jocelyn and I had picked on Wednesday that were ripening on the side? I nervously pointed to a bag of elderly bananas that were sitting on the wood-burning stove, just behind his chair. Danny just laughed and asked, gently, “Why do you keep on...
read moreSome of our chickens are moulting
I went down to the run today and it was covered with a light sprinkling of feathers. My initial gut reaction was slightly panicky. Had a fox got in or a giant rat? Then I remembered that sometimes chicken moult at this time of year. As chickens get older they are more likely to moult. It’s never the whole gang and that is why it’s a bit disturbing. We have three hens, looking great with bright red combs stepping about perkily. The other two look as if they haven’t seen a hairbrush for months. My bantam book is reassuring. As...
read moreGuest Spot: Steve Catchpole’s Cucumber, Tomato and Onion Chutney Recipe
This is the launch of the brand new ** Guest Spot ** on the Cottage Smallholder Blog. Lots of visitors email us. We love this and always respond. These emails have loads of great stories about others’ attempts at self-sufficieny. Some are hilarious. Others are full of new ideas. A few include recipes that sound really promising. We thought it would be good to include some of these contributions in our blog and invite a guest article from time to time. Seve Catchpole, from Helmingham, Suffolk, has the singular honour of being the first...
read moreCottage Smallholder Plum Chutney or Damson Chutney
This chutney recipe works well with plums, wild plums or damsons. It does not need months to mature and keeps well I had some spare time today so finally retrieved the stock pot from Danny, swooshed it out with bicarbonate of soda to get rid of the taint of clove chutney (see Tricks and Tips below) and found the plum chutney recipe from Anne Mary’s old cook book. This was going to be the base of our own Cottage Smallholder Chutney. I had collected three pounds of windfall wild plums yesterday and simmered them last night for 20 minutes...
read moreClove Chutney. Beware!
Due to electricity power cuts our large vat of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Glutney Chutney simmered on and off for about eight hours. When the marathon chutney stirring bonanza finished Danny reached for a spoon and tasted the brew. “This is great. I don’t think that we have to keep this in the larder to mature. Let’s give it away, advise people to keep it for a couple of months and see what happens.” Within a week or so people were coming back for more. “If we make chutney again,” Danny said as he...
read moreSlow cooked roast Spanish lamb recipe infused with thyme and white wine
One Sunday many years ago, Danny and I were pressed for time before a lunch party. In a desperate, ‘they’ll be here in 5 minutes’ move, we threw all the dirty pots and pans from the sink onto the lawn. It was deep winter and we felt confident that our friends wouldn’t venture further than the kitchen table. Danny locked the door to the garden, just in case. All went well until a child, bored with the extensive lingering over coffee and Armagnac, got up and peered out of the tiny window that overlooks the garden. I knew...
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