A wet day at Hampton Court Flower Show drove us straight into the Growing For Taste marquee where we met up with old favourites like Seeds Of Italy - I'll be trying some of its giant-leaved Neapolitan basil, Pennards, The Garlic Farm and Dobies, and found new exhibitors in Otter Farm's Edible Forest Garden and Plants4Presents' exotic herbs and spices.

Spice plants were popular in the Growing For Taste pavilion. Plants4Presents had an especially good range of
turmeric, ginger, cardamom and curry plants.

From top, left to right: chocolate mint plants, the herb display and Perilla frutescans at Jekka's Herb Farm stand. Bottom rotw, hostas and agapanthus in the Floral Marquee.

Floral treats

I’ve always know that courgette flowers were edible but never been quite sure what to do with them. However, following the success of the artichoke fritters (link), and an allotment full of flowering squash, I thought it was high time to make more use of more of the plants. Sifting through various recipe sources, a few golden rules became clear. A stuffing for the flowers shouldn’t be overpowering in flavour, and also needs to cook through quickly – the flowers themselves will deep-fry in one to two minutes. The flowers shouldn’t be overstuffed – they’re fragile and you don’t want them bursting open in the pan. In the end I decided on a herby ricotta mixture and added lemon zest for fragrance. With a delicate combination for the flowers themselves I thought the dish could take a more punchy accompaniment and chopped up a fresh salsa with mint leaves added.

The batter used to coat the stuffed flowers varied quite a bit but all of them leaned towards a tempura-style batter so I decided to use my default tempura batter mix.

The resulting dish was pronounced delicious by everyone. It’s particularly pleasing for the cook as it has that indefinable air of showiness about it, as though you’ve done something very clever. Yet it’s simplicity itself and also given that the flowers are picked more as a by-product of the courgette plants, I get the satisfying feeling that somehow it is food for free.

Deep-fried courgette flowers with fresh minty salsa

Serves 4

8 courgette or squash flowers

Vegetable oil for deep frying

For the stuffing:

250g ricotta

Zest of two lemons

1 tbsp marjoram leaves

2 teasps thyme leaves

Salt

Pepper

For the batter:

125g self-raising flour

100g cornflour

1 teasp vegetable oil

Chilled (ie, from the fridge) sparkling mineral water

Salt

For the salsa:

2 large tomatoes

1 sweet Spanish onion

½ teasp salt

Handful mint leaves, chopped fine

Lime juice to taste

Pick flowers that have fully opened and are in perfect condition. You also want to use them as fresh as possible, ideally straight after picking, but they can be stored in the fridge in a sealed container for a day or so.

Carefully clip out the stamens in the centre of the flower (I use a pair of manicure scissors with slightly curved blades) and trim the stalk to about an inch or so.

To make the salsa, chop the tomatoes into evenly sized dice. Chop the onion finely. Toss in a bowl with the sweet onion, and mint add the salt and lime juice to taste. Leave for half an hour for the flavours to mingle.

To make the stuffing, finely grate the zest from two lemons and add to the ricotta in a bowl. Strip the thyme leaves from their stalks. Chop the marjoram leaves finely and add both herbs to the ricotta. Mash the ricotta, lemon and herb until it’s smooth and creamy and add a little salt and pepper to taste.

Spoon about a dessertspoon of stuffing into each courgette flower. The amount will vary according to the size of each flower, but you don’t want to overstuff them or they will burst. Gently close the petals over the ricotta mix to make a little parcel out of each one.

To make the batter, put the flour into a large bowl, add a generous pinch of  salt and the vegetable oil, then pour a little sparkling water in a whisk lightly with a fork. Keep pouring and whisking until the batter has the consistency of double cream (not the extra thick kind). At a guess it’s about 200ml of sparkling water. It doesn’t matter if there are a few floury lumps in the mixture.

Pour the vegetable oil into a deep-sided pan and heat to 180 degrees Celsius – ideally using a thermometer. When the right temperature is reached, turn the heat down, and holding the courgette flowers by the stalk, dip and twirl them in the batter one at a time. Then drop into the pan and deep fry each one for about 2-3 minutes until the batter begins to turn golden at the edges. Lift out of the oil with tongs or a slotted spoon and rest on kitchen paper to drain off any excess oil. It’s easiest to fry on batches.

Serve two deep-fried courgette flowers per person, along with the salsa.

Deep-fried artichokes

This is deep-fried artichokes and lemon with mint and anchovy dressing. It's made from a recipe in My Favourite Ingredients by Skye Gyngell and I've long wanted to try it - The combination of nutty creamy artichoke and sharp lemon is enticing and while I've had deep-fried artichokes in Rome, where they are a standard restaurant dish, I've never tried it myself. With three little artichokes just the right size on the plot today, I seized the moment and cut all three of them for the dish. For once, I made myself stick strictly to the recipe instructions - no going off piste and deciding to have mayonnaise instead of the mint and anchovy dressing


The results were stunning. Lots of contrasts: between the crispy batter shell and soft artichoke, the sharpness of the lemon softened by the fast cooking, the coolness of the mint with the pungency of the anchovy, and all brought together beautifully.


In truth, it's time-consuming to prepare. The batter requires the inclusion of an egg white whisked to firm peaks (and it does make an incredibly light, crunchy batter), the dressing needs the slow addition of olive oil to create an emulsion and of course artichokes can be fiddly to prepare, although actually the smaller baby 'chokes are easier to trim than fully mature ones - they're less tough.

Apple glut III

We had our first frost of the autumn this week so everything needs to be safely gathered in rather earlier than usual this year. I still have two rows of pink fir apple potatoes in the ground, the chillies are still ripening and the large white beans - the fabes de granja, which are very late this year anyway – won’t make it to maturity before it gets too cold, I think.

So the kitchen is looking rather full at the moment. Pumpkins and squashes curing on the sunniest shelf; the last of the tomatoes stubbornly remaining green on a wide plate in the window, a big bowl of quinces, a netted bag of borlotti beans drying out and strings of shallots and garlic from earlier in the summer. And I’m still working my way through the apples.

We are two jellies down and one to go. The apple and rosewater jelly has a beautiful floral fragrance and is a shimmery pale gold in colour. I was surprised how little rosewater was needed to lift the jelly – just two teaspoonfuls to 2l of apple juice.

Apple and rosewater jelly

First make the apple juice:

5-6lb cooking apples

300ml apple vinegar or cider vinegar

250ml lemon juice (that’s six lemons, the way I squeeze them)

1.2l water

Wash/rinse the apples. Put the vinegar and lemon juice in a very large pan. Roughly chop the apples and add them to the juice. Don’t peel or core them, but do remove any stalk and bad bits.

Add the water and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 45 minutes until the apples are very mushy.

While the apples are simmering, rig up your jelly bag. I used to tie jelly bags up with string and suspend them from cupboard doors, until we refurbished the kitchen and I found that none of the cupboard door handles are high enough – there isn’t enough clearance between the handle and the worktop to suspend a jelly bag with a bowl underneath.

I’ve resorted to the time-honoured method of upending one kitchen chair on another. The bowl to catch the juice sits in the (inverted) seat of the chair, then I tie a big  metal colander by its handles to each upside-down chair leg, so that the colander hangs high over the bowl. The jelly bag sits in the colander – in fact, it’s not really a jellybag, just a very large piece of butter muslin, draped over the sides of the colander.

Ladle the appley mush and all its liquor into the butter muslin and leave to drip overnight. Don’t be tempted to help it along by stirring it or pushing at it  - this will make the resulting jelly cloudy, so just let it drip.

Next day:

Get some jars together and sterilise them by washing in very hot soapy water, rinsing in very hot water and then drying/warming them, on their sides in an oven heated to 120 degrees. They can sit happily in the oven while you get on with the rest of the jelly, I find it impossible to estimate at this stage how many jars I need, so I always wash and sterilise what looks to me like far too much.

Measure out how much juice you have, and pour into a very large pan. Then (this is so much easier in imperial measurement), for every pint of apple juice in the pan, add 1lb sugar. Next add 2 teaspons of rosewater. Heat the juice and sugar slowly at first, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Taste the juice and add a little more rosewater if you think the taste is very faint. Once happy with that, raise the heat to bring it to the boil. Once boiling, boil hard.

Apple juice doesn’t take long to set. Start testing after five minutes, then every 2-3 minutes after that. Spoon out 2 teaspoonsful of juice from the pan on to a saucer. Leave for a minute or so to cool a bit, then push a forefinger through the middle of the juice puddle. When the mixture wrinkle as you push the finger through, and the juice won’t flow back to meet in the middle again in your finger’s slipstream, you have reached a set. Turn off heat and skim the surface of the jelly. Retrieve the warmed jars and ladle the jelly into them – I use a strainer as well if there still some floating bits in the jelly. Seal the jars and leave to cool.

Apple jelly with a hint of mint also works. I wanted to keep the mint reasonably subtle rather than producing a green sludge, and also I over-enthusiastically threw the chopped mint leaves into the jelly *before* I skimmed it. So when I did skim it, I ended up removing quite a lot of mint as well. Ahem.

But, you know what? It’s prettier, and the flavour isn’t overpowering. I think I might prefer it.

Apple jelly with a hint of mint

Apple juice as above

Sugar, as above

A large handful, maybe two large handfuls, of mint.

Remove the stalks from the mint and chop finely. Make the apple juice and jelly as above (though minus the rosewater, obviously) and when it reaches setting point, turn off the heat and skim the jelly meticulously. Leave for about five minutes. Add the chopped mint and stir well. Leave the jelly again and then stir to make sure that the mint is being held in suspension in the jelly and not all rising up to the top.

Ladle into jars as before, and seal. Leave to cool and keep an eye on them. If the mint leaves are all huddling together, invert the jars for a minute or so to let the mint flecks resettle.